by Ira Trivedi
Savita Bhabhi is the good Indian housewife who lives in a small town and cheerfully takes care of her home, husband, in-laws and numerous visiting family members. But she also has a raging sex drive, loves the taste of semen and is bored silly with her workaholic husband. In her free time, she seduces door-to-door salesmen, servant boys, young relatives and even her husband’s colleagues, luring them into having hedonistic sex with her. As cartoon porn, Savita Bhabhi is mediocre at best—the script is laughably simplistic, the artwork amateurish (to the extent that Savita Bhabhi looks different in each cartoon) and the plotline crude, yet it is hugely popular. The success of Savita Bhabhi, it seems, lies in the distinctly local flavour of the comic strip that readers relate to.
In one episode Savita Bhabhi is shown having sex with a variety of service-providers, men whom Indian women typically visit every day. Bhabhi has sex with the local kirana-wallah in the storeroom and also with the kulfi-wallah whom she asks to insert the kulfi into her vagina. In another episode, Savita Bhabhi contests the Mrs India pageant where a judge, an uncanny Amitabh Bachchan lookalike, asks for sexual favours that she is more than happy to dispense. In another episode, ‘The Perfect Indian Bride’, Bhabhi convinces her nephew to have a quick arranged marriage to a girl by proving to him that Indian women are hardly sexually demure.
A journalist aptly describes Bhabhi: ‘Her long dark hair parted dutifully in the middle, bright red sindoor and a mangalsutra dangling between oddly heavy bosoms, Savita Bhabhi was pornographic, but not quite. The cartoon comic strip may have inspired fantasy for a few, but for most, it poked fun at the coy Indian attitude towards sexuality, at our discomfort with any bold assertion of the sexual. The more virgin and demure she appeared, the more kinky and lurid we wanted her to be. When the Traveling Bra Salesman rang her doorbell, or when cousins visited from a world afar, no surprise that Bhabhi quickly discarded all pretence of “sharam”.’35
Savita Bhabhi forms a part of her reader’s daily existence as she exists in the realm of their possibility. She plays off common Indian fantasies: of the young man lusting after the neighbourhood bhabhi, or the new sister-in-law who is strictly off limits. ‘This layered response to a bhabhi or sister-in-law just does not exist in the west. So Savita Bhabhi really is an Indian product.’36 Sociologist Patricia Uberoi ‘cites the ‘90’s Bollywood smash hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, a family film that sanitized a range of erotic relationships in popular culture. The film carried a whole erotic register just below its surface: the bhayya-bhabhi relationship was usefully immortalized in songs and purple sarees.’37
For Bhabhi there is no romance in sexual encounters. There is no hugging, no kissing, and no ‘I love you’ except with her husband, with whom she is never depicted having sex. Unlike Western pornography, there is always bristly pubic hair in sight, on both the men as well as on Bhabhi. Though Savita Bhabhi initiates the sex, it is the man who takes over, and traditional male-female sexual roles are followed. Savita Bhabhi pleases men by performing fellatio, and then begs them not to ejaculate inside her, but on her breasts or in her mouth since she enjoys the taste of semen. In her own words, she says, ‘Nooo don’t cum inside me... I want you to shoot it on my face.’
‘“A woman once thanked me for showing Savita reaching an orgasm in every episode,” says Deshmukh, the pseudonym of Puneet Agarwal, the creator of Savita Bhabhi. “I can wager that many husbands have asked their wives about female orgasms and how they can help them reach it after reading the comic.” It may be self-serving, but according to Deshmukh, his pneumatic housewife has helped us ‘take a small step in bridging the gap between male and female sexuality.’38
Deshmukh says that he wanted to show that sex is not only a male thing, and that it is ‘a two-way street’, especially since close to 30 per cent of the viewers are female. He is trying to focus on female pleasure in the coming stories, which I notice are getting more sexually equal, with men performing a lot more cunnilingus on Savita Bhabhi.
Unfortunately, in June 2009, the Indian government sent a letter to all internet service providers asking them to block savitabhabhi.com. The ban was the result of complaints from women’s groups who charged Savita Bhabhi with representing the ‘demon of impurity’.39 There was a large public outcry, mostly virtual (since this is where Bhabhi’s fans existed) against banning Savita Bhabhi, as millions of readers were left in the lurch.
Fortunately for her fans, a few months after the ban, Savita Bhabhi was back in action, re-emerging on a different website under a paid subscription model. Today, Savita Bhabhi episodes are released every few weeks, and the creators have even started a new series titled Savita@18, based on Bhabhi’s teenage exploits. Bollywood, too, has taken note and a movie starring Rozlyn Khan is in the works.
Porn shifts the way people think about sexual relationships, about intimacy and about women. Savita Bhabhi is a satire on Indian society and showcases the contradictions of a repressed, yet overly stimulated society in a laughably simplistic way. Even though Savita Bhabhi is just a toon porn star, she represents the Indian woman who is proud of her sexuality and is willing to flaunt it. Savita Bhabhi also undermines the patriarchal view that every traditional Indian woman has to be ‘pure’ which is the literal meaning of the name ‘Savita’.
According to creator Deshmukh, ‘India is a sexually repressed country and for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first. We are already seeing this, and hopefully SB will do her bit to help in this revolution.’40
Today, besides home-grown pornographic icons like Savita Bhabhi, western imports are beginning to make their appearance as well. India has its first Playboy bunny, Sherlyn Chopra, who rose to national fame after her appearance on the cover of Playboy magazine, and Sunny Leone, a porn-star of Indian origin, has become enormously popular and is now appearing in mainstream Bollywood films. Realizing the untapped potential of a virgin market, Playboy is opening its first club in Goa, where the first Indian Playboy bunnies have specially designed bunny costumes—a two-piece outfit and sheer skirt along with the traditional bunny accessories of cuff, collar, bow tie and bunny-tail. According to a company statement, ‘this new costume is a celebration of India’s rich culture and the Americana of the classic Playboy Bunny Costume’.
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With the advent and penetration of broadband internet and affordable cell phones, sex is now just a click away. Social media websites like Facebook and Orkut, others specifically tailored for dating, and yet others for sexual encounters like PlanetRomeo have made sex easily accessible. Neuroscientists Dr Sai Gaddam and Dr Ogi Ogas studied the online sexual behaviour of 100 million people across the world by analysing internet data in their book A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships. Gaddam’s and Ogas’s studies indicate that Indian searches for sexual content demonstrate a lack of sexual experience; ‘how to kiss’ is one of the more popular searches in India compared to searches from Western countries, which are less instructional and more exploratory—like ‘anal’ or ‘bondage’.
Gaddam and Ogas also found that the sexual material that people in India searched for was titillating rather than being explicitly pornographic because of the sexual naiveté of the searchers. Common plotlines of popular porn films revolve around fantasies of first sexual experiences, uncommon themes in countries where attitudes towards sexual relations are relaxed and liberal. Indians are aroused by culturally specific content. For example, the fetishization of the belly button was much more common in the Indian subcontinent than anywhere else in the world, and internet searches like ‘wet sari hot navel songs’ and ‘wet sari in rain’ were popular searches on YouTube.
But the internet alone apparently isn’t enough satisfy the Indian appetite for sexual fulfilment. Sex toys are the latest craze in India, and Chinese products have flooded the black market. The adult product market in India is estimated to be US$221 million (1,377 crore) against a global market of US$21.8 billio
n (1,35,830 crore) and this is expected to double to US$453 million (2,821 crore) in the next three years, exploding to around US$1.6 billion (9,967 crore) by 2020.41 Experts attribute this boom to the growing number of people who want to experiment in their sex lives. Statistics too show that currently just 9 per cent of Indians use vibrators compared to 21 per cent globally although 57 per cent Indians say they’d be interested in trying sex toys if they had access to them.42 Though Chinese sex toys appear to be new entrants to India, the truth is the concept of sex toys is ancient. In the Kamasutra, Vatsyayana advises his readers to use wooden penises to please women, and for men who don’t have access to women, he advises using stone sculptures of women. These ancient erotic paraphernalia sound curiously similar to dildos and inflatable latex dolls, two fast-selling varieties of sex toys.
The sale of sex toys is illegal as defined by Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code which defines ‘obscene’ as ‘a book, pamphlet, paper, writing, drawing, painting, representation, figure or any other object if it is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest’, so sex toys are only sold on the black market. Prices for sex toys are unregulated so profit margins on these products can be huge. Where there is a demand, the enterprising Indian is never far behind, so as sex toys catch on in the country, many entrepreneurs are jumping on to the sex toy bandwagon—some more successfully than others. In Mumbai, a fifty-year-old NRI from the US was arrested at the airport for smuggling sex toys including sex games and high-end lingerie worth 3.5 lakhs.43 Even in smaller Indian towns, sex toys are fast becoming popular, and recently a stash of contraband sex toys was recovered from a hardware store in Rajkot, Gujarat.44 Realizing the potential of the sex toy industry, Samir Saraiya, an ex-employee of Microsoft quit his job to start an online sex shop. He has an exclusive agreement to sell global lingerie and sex toy brands through his website thatspersonal.com. The lawyer representing the online store hopes to circumvent the law, as their products do not carry graphic or pictorial descriptions, which can be classified as ‘obscene’ by Indian law.
SEXCAPADE
One of the biggest centres of the sex toy trade in the country is Palika Bazaar in Delhi. On the day I visit, with my boyfriend Vinayak in tow, I notice there isn’t a woman in sight. The dim cavernous shopping corridors are lined with small shops that sell a range of goods from black market electronic items to fake Jockey underwear, astrology services, porn videos and sex toys. The place is packed with groups of loitering young men who throw me lascivious stares. I am glad that I have had the foresight to bring a male companion with me for this expedition.
Our first stop is a small video stall that looks illegal enough to source what we are looking for. The placard outside the shop reads ‘Rainbow Videos’ which I quickly discover has nothing to do with homosexuality. Vinayak asks the salesman if he has porn. He quickly pulls out a pile of DVDs in plastic covers and beckons for Vinayak to sit next to him on a small stool behind the counter so he can show him his wares. Vinayak points to me, and I go take a seat with some hesitation.
He points to the fuzzy pictures on the pirated movies.
‘This is top-class desi porn. Only Indian girls and twelve hours non-stop.’
‘Is this, uh, XXX?’ I ask
‘Yes, ma’am, don’t worry, this is five times X. You won’t miss out on anything!’ he replies jauntily.
After we choose a couple of DVDs, for which we pay an exorbitantly high price (and later discover that we have been ripped off), Vinayak asks him with hesitation if he has any of ‘those kinds of toys’. He gives Vinayak a slimy smile.
‘Yes, sir, just wait one minute.’
The salesman makes a couple of phone calls and five minutes later a man carrying a black garbage bag approaches us.
Again he asks me to sit on the stool next to him. He begins to pull out a variety of sex toys from the bag. ‘For female only,’ he says. The range of the penis-shaped vibrators and dildos is astonishing. They come in blocks, in squares, shaped as sausage-like human organs; they are made from plastic, from silicone, from rubber, and other unidentifiable materials; they come in a spectrum of colours—in fluorescent pink, in black, in skin tones and rainbow colours. As I look at these pieces the man continues to comment on his wares.
‘Ma’am, this is best quality. Just see how bendy. 100 per cent silicon,’ he says, twisting the dildo 180 degrees to demonstrate its flexibility.
The prices that the man quotes to us are outrageous, starting from 5,000 for a plastic vibrator, and going up to 10,000 for top-quality silicone. We’ve been fleeced once, but not again. I do not purchase these expensive toys, but I do find out more about who buys them. Our salesman tells me that the most common purchaser of sex toys is the single Indian male, though, at times, they come with their female partners. Single women customers, or groups of girls are rare, though he has had a couple of foreign women customers. As I glance around the seedy market with its squadrons of greasy, hovering men, I can see why women might not want to come here.
Vinayak and I stroll around the market, still on the hunt for sex toys, and are surprised at how big it is. The deeper we go into the dizzying, concentric maze, the sleazier the stores seem to become. Vinayak asks a young loafer—a Justin Bieber lookalike, no older than seventeen, with tight jeans and the band of his underwear showing—where we can find sex toys. He asks us to follow him, and we are led to a small storefront decorated with a variety of statuettes of Indian gods. The sickly sweet smell of incense pervades the air. In a similar fashion to the previous salesman, he too asks me to sit next to him on a small stool. He makes a few phone calls and soon a man with a black garbage bag appears.
The faux Justin Bieber is an aggressive salesman, and as he shows me a variety of dildo-cum-vibrators he comments lovingly on his products.
‘Ma’am, what quality!’ ‘Ma’am, this one is 100 per cent Japanese technology.’ ‘Arre, ma’am, this one is to love only,’ he says fondling a large black dildo, which he proceeds to demonstrate, strapping it on and thrusting back and forth.
He too quotes outrageously high prices, and when I tell him that I am in the market for something cheap, he brings out a variety of small, dinky toys—a keychain vibrator, a vibrating cock-ring, and even a delay spray to be used by men.
After a lengthy negotiation, I am sold a dildo-cum-vibrator for 1,000, down from the initial price of 15,000. As we are leaving, the faux Justin Bieber yells after us.
‘Ma’am, what about sir? Let me show you an amazing piece for him.’ Out of sheer curiosity we go back to the stall, where he pulls out a giant block of silicone with a slit down the centre. There is some black, curly pubic hair near the mouth of the slit, indicative of a vagina. I examine what I think is fake pubic hair and when it comes off easily, I suddenly realize that this hair isn’t necessarily synthetic or part of the toy. I quickly hand the toy back to the whippersnapper salesman and rush out of the store as fast as I can to find the nearest bathroom.
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Sex toys and porn aside, there are other indicators of how rapidly the sexual revolution is being monetized. Take the condom industry. Time was when there were only a couple of brands of condoms available in the country, the most popular ones being manufactured by the government, called Nirodh, and the other by a private manufacturer, aptly named Kamasutra. Today, the scenario has changed considerably. Condoms are readily and invitingly available in all shapes, sizes and flavours, including a paan-flavoured condom.
The current market size for condoms in India is US$120 million (747 crore) and is growing steadily every year.45 Sales in the contraceptive category grew around 30 per cent last year compared to the 15 per cent growth in food products, hot beverages, hair and personal care products. The market is forecast to double to US$234 million (1,458 crore) in 2015 and grow to nearly US$715 million (4,454 crore) in 2020.46 A manager at the popular chain of Twenty Four Seven convenience stores in Delhi disclosed that at his centrally located store, condom sales were highest on a Saturday night
and that several of his customers were young women. An estimated 77 per cent of single women use the morning-after pill while 26 per cent married women do the same.47
Other products associated with sexually active behaviour are also becoming popular. For example, vaginal beautification is becoming increasingly important to Indian women. Brazilian wax, a process in which all the hair in and around a woman’s vaginal area is removed, is now common in the beauty parlours that pockmark India’s urban landscape, when less than five years ago, the procedure was relatively unknown to Indian women. I remember a visiting American friend asking for one at a New Delhi parlour, and getting a look of disgust in return. Today, across cities in India, Brazilian waxing is becoming common. During a recent trip to Haridwar, a city on the Ganga most famous for holy water-cleansing dips, a beautician at a parlour asked me if I had a boyfriend and if I would like a Brazilian wax all in the same breath. Indians have even taken hair removal one step further. Laser hair removal parlours have become almost as ubiquitous as beauty parlours. A manager at a nation-wide chain told me that permanent hair removal in the bikini or vaginal area is the single most popular item on their menu.
Other types of vaginal beautification include ‘vajazzling’ a process of decorating the vagina with diamonds, crystals and other sparkly stones stuck on by glue. The procedure lasts until the hair on the vagina starts growing back. ‘Clitter’, or glitter for the clitoris is the cheaper form of vajazzling.48
Some experts blame easy availability of Western pornography online for making women want to beautify their vaginas. Surveys reveal that 34 per cent of Indian women in metro areas watch porn49 where they see clean-shaven vaginas. Thinking that this is what it ‘should’ look like, women are opting for these processes.
Women are also becoming more interested in what they wear to bed and the resulting growth in the lingerie market has taken India by storm—the organized lingerie market has almost doubled from 780 crore in 2003 to 1,645 crore today.50